


After All These Years

by the_transfeminine_mystique



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Canon Divergence, F/F, bastet but jack says yes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-12
Updated: 2019-01-12
Packaged: 2019-10-08 21:56:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17394407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_transfeminine_mystique/pseuds/the_transfeminine_mystique
Summary: Jack wasn’t supposed to say yes. She offered as a formality. But now they were heading to see Angela and Ana knows that the doctor has reason to be furious with the woman who abandoned her, who let her think she was dead.





	After All These Years

Ana had expected him to say no, to decline medical aid. She had suggested it automatically, as a habit, because offering aid and rejecting the offer had been their old rhythm. And so it was without thinking that she had suggested going to Angela when Jack (or at least what was left of him) suddenly had wounds that weren’t healing properly, saying that she would take him and ensure his safety.

“That’s a good idea, actually. If I’m having this reaction to Ga— to the Reaper’s weapons then other people will have as well. Best if somebody see just what the hell is going on with it.”

Ana raised her eyebrow, a smirk alighting on her face, if only to hide her surprise and apprehension.

“The great Soldier 76, international outlaw, masked man vigilante, heading to the family doctor.”

Of course, if she had said what she was feeling, she might have talked about how scared she was — her,  Ana Amari, who was more at home on the battlefield than she ever had been in any apartment, who prided herself on her ability to master fear — to see Angela again. She might have mused about how the doctor would react to seeing her again. She might have remarked on how, despite that fear, the thought “you should go see Angela” was always in the back of her mind.

But she didn’t.

Jack, not having noticed her faraway eyes, merely snorted.

“I think I’ve missed a few annual checkups, I hope I’m still in their system.” His voice lost its wry tone as he went on. “If it were anybody else, I wouldn’t bother. But Angela’s the very best.”

He had continued talking, something about how necessary it was for medics to know how to counteract the Reaper, but Ana had stopped listening. Her mind has latched on to those two sentences _If it were anybody else, I wouldn’t bother. But Angela’s the very best_. That’s how she felt too. That’s how she always felt, and that’s what had always pushed her to come back to Angela, to let her in on the secret that so far only Jack was in on. She felt a twinge of guilt for wanting to tell Angela and not Fareeha, but she pushed that down. She knew them both, and how they worked. Fareeha needed to know that her mother died honorably, engaged in the protection of her and of the world.

Angela needed to know that Ana didn’t die on her watch.

Ana’s attention returned to her immediate surroundings, to find (with very little surprise) Jack still talking excitedly about the potential for medical intervention to counteract Reaper’s weapon and, possibly, his phantom-like physical abilities as well. She sighed. This was just like the old days, she thought: she was lost in thought and Jack was monologuing. The perfect combination.

Eventually he wound down, and she reminded him that it was late and he should sleep. She’d take first watch.

Staying up alone gave her time to think, and that’s why she always loved it so much. More than once since her “death” her thoughts had turned to Angela on long nights, and this night was no exception. She couldn’t seem to wrench her mind away from the doctor. The last time she had seen Angela had been just before the reconnaissance mission where she was shot. It wasn’t supposed to be dangerous, and so Angela hadn’t met her at the transport. No, their last time seeing each other had been hours before, in Angela’s office.

 •

Despite expecting an empty office, Ana was greeted with the smile she had come to love. She was just dropping off some design prototypes for medic suit enhancements, but Angela always greeted her as if she was an oasis in the desert. Ana couldn’t help but smile back. She felt heat rise to her cheeks as Angela swiftly crossed the office and locked the door. She knew what was coming next. Angela was insatiable at the best of times, and they hadn’t had a proper chance to see each other privately for more than a week.

In another second, Angela’s arms were around her neck, and her lips had found the captain’s. Ana had to suppress a chuckle. Angela was putting on a good show of being in charge, but they both knew that it would only take a firm word from Ana for her to completely melt. Ana smiled into the kiss. She loved how perfectly submissive Angela was. Her good girl.

They broke apart, and Ana could feel Angela’s eyes burning into her own, silently begging for a command, for a rough touch, for _something_. Ana took a step closer, and Angela’s eyes widened as she took a step backwards, her back pressed up against the locked door. Ana took another step, situating a leg between Angela’s, her thigh just barely pressing against Angela’s body, provoking a hitch in the doctor’s breath and a lightly whispered “Ana, please…”

It took all of Ana’s restraint to not let her face break into a grin. Angela was getting spoiled. She knew that she need just beg and look at Ana with those deep, clear blue eyes and the older woman would fuck her just like she wanted to be fucked. But not today. Today the brat would learn that she couldn’t get everything she wanted just by breathily moaning “please.” Ana would certainly touch her, but she would be careful to be gentler, softer, and more tender than Angela wanted.

Angela gasped when Ana pushed back her hair and buried her face in the doctor’s neck, but the gasp turned into a whine when she felt only Ana’s lips and not her teeth. Angela’s hands tangled into Ana’s hair, pulling her closer in an attempt to coax some marks out of her lover, but to no avail. Ana’s kisses were soft against her neck and jaw, despite Angela’s needy whine.

Not getting what she wanted, Angela decided to change tactics. Leaving one hand entwined in Ana’s hair, Angela grabbed one of Ana’s with her other and shoved it up her shirt. Ana smiled against Angela’s neck. The doctor loved having her tits roughed up. Loved it. And so of course Ana let her fingers brush softly and gently over Angela’s skin, lightly tracing the edges of the doctor’s bra, refusing to give her the satisfaction. Unsurprisingly, Angela’s whines were getting more insistent and demanding, and she was trying increasingly hard to coax any measure of roughness out of Ana’s hands and mouth. As if eventually sensing that she wouldn’t make any leeway that way, Angela began to lean into Ana’s thigh, lodged as it was between her legs. Ana suddenly found both of Angela’s arms thrown around her, pulling her closer. Well, more accurately, pulling her _thigh_ closer. She was desperately rolling her hips, trying to satisfy herself with the rough fabric of Ana’s pants.

Ana chuckled softly as she pulled her leg back, reveling in the loud whine that motion drew, a whine that sounded suspiciously like the word “no.” Feigning ignorance, Ana mustered her sweetest voice and asked, “what’s wrong, my love? Is there something you want?”

Angela seemed to realize for the first time that the soft touches were intentional, that Ana was holding back in order to watch her squirm and beg. Color immediately shot to her cheeks, and she tried (unsuccessfully) to sound indignant. “You know very well what I want, Ana!”

Ana only had to raise an eyebrow for Angela’s act faltered, although Ana could hear in her voice a glimmer of excitement, hope that her transgression would lead to punishment.

“I mean, Captain. I’m sorry Captain.”

Ana just smiled sweetly at her. “It’s ok, angel, ‘Ana’ works fine too.” She savored the needy whine of disappointment that followed.

Ana pulled back just a little, just enough to make eye contact.

“I do need to go, though, angel. I have to get ready for a little bit of recon.”

Angela’s gaze dropped, but she perked back up when Ana continued.

“After I get back, though, I think I can give you what you want. You should look special for me when I get back, hm?”

Angela’s smile flashed back across her face. “Of course, Captain.”

Ana smiled and gently pulled Angela away from the door.

“I’ll see you then, angel.”

She was almost out the door when Angela started to say something, and then stopped. Ana turned back, but Angela shook her head.

“No time for that now. We’ll talk when you get back.”

Her smile wasn’t gone, so Ana assumed that whatever it was she wanted to talk about wasn’t a cause for concern. She gave the doctor one last smile before heading to her quarters.

 •

That was the last time she had seen her. The recon mission was supposed to be quick and peaceful, but Ana and her small team found their presence not nearly as unexpected as they would have hoped. She had been scanning the base wall with her rifle’s scope and then it was just a flash of images and sensations.

 

Person.

Rifle.

Sniper.

Lacroix.

Hesitation.

Pain.

Falling.

Wet.

Cold.

 

When they heard the shot and saw Ana fall, her team had undoubtedly cleared out fast. Body-recovery on recon missions was low priority if it stood any chance of compromising the mission or the rest of the team. And since they would have seen the commander get shot in the head, they would most likely not spend time debating about whether she was really dead or not.

 

Ana shivered, casting a stray glance back at Jack’s sleeping form in an attempt to ground herself. Encountering Jack and Gabe at the same time, both of them, like her, shells of their former selves, had made the memories feel more real and more urgent tonight, as if she could lose them at any second.

The thought that above everything else she had tried to suppress came front and center to her, despite her attempts to not acknowledge it.

Angela. In her red lingerie and white stockings held up by a garter, waiting in Ana’s room, like she always was right after a short mission.

When had she realized that Ana wasn’t coming back? How had she figured out? Their relationship wasn’t terribly public, so she wouldn’t have been formally notified. She wasn’t the emergency technician on shift that night, so she wouldn’t have gotten the call about the team returning.

Had she just waited?

Had she spent the night in Ana’s room, hoping against hope that she would wake up to find the captain’s body pressed against hers?

Had she heard a scrambling at the keypad and prepared herself to see Ana only to be greeted by the surprised face of the requisitions officer, come to take stock of the deceased’s room?

Had she suffered in silence? Did she let anybody see just how bad she was hurting?

 

Ana willed the tears from her eyes, and willed herself to not speculate on how Angela would react to seeing her dead lover again. This was about Jack. He wanted to go to Angela, so they would. Cairo wasn’t going anywhere, and she’d be back.

 

The last Ana had heard, Angela had accepted a teaching position at the University of Geneva, and a quick online search indicated that she was still there. Ana committed the office address to memory. It felt so real, looking at the address on a map. It was finally sinking in that she was going to see Angela again.

She was scared. Angela would hate her for leaving, hate her almost as much as she hated herself for never making contact. And seeing that hatred in Angela’s eyes might succeed in doing what Amélie Lacroix had failed to do.

 

Ana and Jack approached the building where Angela’s office was located. It was fortunately a first-floor office. Ana could have scaled the building, but Jack’s condition was worsening and Ana was glad she didn’t have to risk him falling and attracting attention. After waiting for the oscillating security camera to face the other way, the two approached the window, quickly confirming that though the light was on, it was empty. Jack quickly forced the window, and both of them made it in just as the camera started swinging back. Ana breathed a sigh of relief. They were in. Now they just had to wait.

Back at Overwatch, it was rare for Angela to leave the lab before 2 in the morning. Ana had sought to encourage more healthy lifestyle habits, and she had found some success, but Angela had apparently since fallen back into her old patterns. A fleeting thought suggested that this might be confirmation that Angela was single, but Ana chased the thought away, just as she chased away the urge to look through the personal items on Angela’s desk and shelves.

“You’re here for Jack,” her mind played on repeat, “not to reconnect with Angela or to get closure. This isn’t for you.”

She glanced at the clock. It was nearing 1:30, and they had been crouched in the corner of the office for about a half hour. She looked back at Jack to find him huddled in the corner against a bookshelf, his head lolling to one side. The infection, poison, whatever it was had done a number on his endurance. Despite herself, she was glad he had agreed to come to Angela. He wouldn’t have thrown it on his own.

The now-sleeping Jack Morrison created a new problem, however. Any hope of setting the terms of their first encounter with the Doctor was shattered by his light snoring. Angela would be aware of them the instant she opened the door. Ana figured that if she was going to be conspicuous, she might at least also be comfortable, and let herself lean back in Angela’s desk chair. It was more comfortable than the doctor’s chair at Overwatch, she remembered with a smile. She couldn’t count how many times she leaned back in that chair, her eyes on the ceiling, Angela’s head between her thighs, and that beautiful voice whispering things like—

“If you don’t tell me what this is about in ten seconds I’ll shoot.”

Ana’s eyes shot open (when had she closed them? It had only been a second…) to find Angela, her face steel and emotionless, with her Overwatch-issue pistol pointing at Ana’s head. A rough change from the whispers that had been running through Ana’s head moments earlier.

For all of her preparation, every second spent imagining what she would say to the doctor when they finally met, her mind went blank, and she said the only thing that she could, her voice scarcely above a whisper.

“Angela…”

She saw the pistol waver, as though Angela might lower it, but instead her other hand rose to clutch it tighter.

“Tell me what this is about. Tell me why you have the audacity to break into my office, to break into my office with—with _that tattoo_. What do you want? Why are you doing this to me?”

Ana saw tears springing to her eyes, and knew that despite her best efforts they were coming to her own as well.

“Angela, it’s… it’s me. I’m alive. I know it’s hard to—“

“You died. Brannigan, Clark, and de Jesus saw you die, they watched you fall. The dead don’t come back, you are not Ana Amari.”

Angela’s voice was nearly a sob, and Ana had to fight the impulse to rush to her, to hold Angela in her arms, to convince her that she was indeed still alive. She wasn’t there for herself or for Angela, no matter how badly she wanted to be. She had a responsibility.

“We need you.” She gestured behind her to the figure slumped in the corner. “Jack needs you.”

Angela’s body stiffened as she noticed the sleeping man for the first time. The gun had lowered from Ana’s head and was pointing at nothing in particular, although Angela’s two-handed grip on it had not loosened.

“He’s not here either. He’s dead.”

“Just look at him, Angela, please,” Ana pleaded.

Angela moved towards Jack, her slow pace getting quicker, her gun clattering to the floor. Ana didn’t know what it was about him that she recognized, he admittedly hadn’t aged particularly well (although soldiers rarely did, in her experience). But Angela knew it was him, and accepted his presence much faster than she had accepted hers, Ana realized uncomfortably. She pushed the thought to the back of her mind. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that she had brought Jack to the finest help to be found anywhere.

Angela had evidently snapped over to her professional persona, because her voice was clear, betraying no hint of emotion when she called over her shoulder.

“All of my assistants have gone home. I need you to assist me. I trust you can do that?”

Ana nodded and gave a grunt of affirmation. She was familiar enough with medical practices she figured. She had certainly been in Angela’s medbay enough to get a sense of how she ran things.

Jack was standing shakily by this time, and nodded at Ana as Angela helped him support himself to the door. Ana followed to the doctor’s lab, just a little down the hall. She had done it. She had gotten help for Jack.

 

Angela was a miracle worker. In one sleepless night she had isolated the effect of the Reaper’s bullets and had stabilized Jack’s condition. It would take time to synthesize a general antidote, but Jack was on the mend.

At various points, when there was a lull in activity or Angela had to wait for a rapid test to come back, they had a chance to talk. She asked about Jack and listened intently when he described his last few years, but her interest was firmly on Ana.

Ana had stepped out for a cigarette when Angela started cleaning up. She knew the doctor was particular about her lab and that she wouldn’t be of any further help that night. She was surprised when Angela joined her a few minutes later. Ana was on her second one. She raised her eyebrows when the doctor pulled her own cigarettes out of her pocket.

“Since when did you smoke? Imagine if the Angela Ziegler who used to rip cigarettes out of my mouth could see you now.” She didn’t mean to tease, exactly. But she would be lying if she said she didn’t long to see if they could fall back into their old dynamic.

Angela chuckled. “I imagine there are a lot of unacceptable things that that Angela Ziegler would find in me. But that would pale in comparison to what the old Ana Amari would say about you.” She held her unlit cigarette to her lips, waiting. It only took Ana a split second to get the hint and pull out her own lighter for the doctor.

“Imagine if that Ana could see that you ran out on me, that you never once tried to contact me, to tell me that you were alive.”

Ana hung her head. “By the time I snapped out of survival mode, and then out of covert ops mode, time had passed and I was ashamed. I committed to doing whatever good I could do as a ghost.”

“You could have still come back.”

Ana looked up to see tears in Angela’s eyes again.

“You could have still come back to me.”

“I know. I should have. And I cannot apologize enough.”

They stood in silence for several minutes as each of them finished their cigarettes. Eventually Angela broke the silence.

“What will you do now?”

Ana looked at the ground. “I need to return to Cairo. The people need somebody to stand up for them.”

“You could stay here. With me.”

Ana’s eyes shot back up to look into Angela’s before dropping back to the ground. She had never felt so tired as in that moment.

“You don’t want that. You don’t want to take on somebody who abandoned you, who allowed you to think she was dead. No, I’ve done too much for you to take me back.”

Angela’s voice was soft. “You don’t get to decide that. Nobody gets to decide that except for me.”

“I left you waiting, waiting in my room, waiting to talk to me, waiting for me to hold you, always waiting. I could have come back and I didn’t.”

Angela laughed softly, her voice carrying a note of sadness. “You did leave me waiting. And after months everybody told me to stop waiting, that you were gone. But I think a part of me resisted. When I saw you earlier tonight I couldn’t allow myself to hope that it was actually you. But it was.”

She rested her arms around Ana’s neck and gazed deeply into her old commander’s eyes.

“And now you’re back from your mission. And I can ask you the question I’ve waited so long to ask.”

Ana blinked, confused as to what Angela could have possibly wanted to talk about that night, years ago, that would still be relevant now. She looked to the doctor for clarification, but Angela was simply smiling through the tears that were welling up in her eyes.

“I think I kept this close to me because it gave me hope against hope that I’d see you again. And somehow I knew that if I ever did, I would feel just like I did the day before you left.”

Ana watched as Angela fished a gold chain out from under her collar, slipped it over her head, and pulled it out from where it was tucked inside her shirt. There was no pendant on the chain, just two gold rings.

 


End file.
